Pinterest Win

I've been wanting to finish the girls' room for days, but a giant mountain of homeless costumes kept me from declaring it done. I'd pondered and prayed and experimented with a few different storage options, but nothing was quite right. This morning, after the big kids were at school, Sophie and I spent some time searching for ideas on Pinterest. I scrolled through several that explained how to turn an old chest of drawers into a darling, child-sized wardrobe. Ah, if only we had such an item, I wistfully thought. Then I found one that called for an IKEA bookcase.

Would you believe that we had two IKEA bookcases in our basement, languishing from lack of use? We've had them for many years and didn't think they had any life left in them. Bryan had even reinforced them a few years back, but they simply didn't work for our book needs anymore.

But they might work for costumes!

I started out with this (but sans the back panel):

Next I removed the shelves and the reinforcements and scrubbed the frame a bit:

Then I lined the inside walls with fancy paper and put up a tension rod for the costumes:

And then lined the outside walls with chalkboard paper:

Finally I called Phoebe in to see her new treasure, which of course required a photo shoot:

Phoebe was thrilled when she saw her new costume closet. Of course, shortly after the last picture was taken, we discovered the tension rod was kind of busted and the costumes were once again littering the floor, but I'm sure we can fix that.